Some objects only reveal themselves with time. Use softens them, familiarity sharpens our regard for them, and eventually they stop being possessions and start being companions. That idea sat at the centre of Objects by Women, a one-day exhibition presented by Yu Mei for New Zealand Fashion Week, in partnership with Range Rover and Gow Langsford.
Set within the walls of Gow Langsford’s Onehunga gallery, where contemporary art usually holds court, the exhibition gathered eleven designers whose practices are rarely shown side by side. Augustina Binyamin’s Canopy Bench held the centre of one room, while Turumeke Harrington’s sculpture combined industrial materials to form a constellation of interlocked whētu (stars). They were joined by Catherine Griffiths, Jenny Takahashi Palmer, Kathryn Tsui, Marta Buda, Katherine Rutecki, Shannen Young, Binh Minh Ha, Josephine Jelicich and Georgia Tikaputini Douglas Hood, with spatial design by Dahlia Ghani and exhibition writing by Emma Ng. Remarkably, all but three of the works on show were made specifically for the occasion, a measure of how seriously the designers took the invitation.
At the heart of it all was the debut of Yu Mei’s Pania bag, presented alone on a plinth and developed over more than three years of testing and iteration, part of a broader conversation about objects made to be lived with for decades rather than seasons. In Range Rover, a marque with its own long-held convictions about design and permanence, the exhibition found a fitting partner. For founder Jessie Wong, Objects by Women extended the thinking behind Common Material, the inaugural Wellington design biennial she spearheaded earlier this year, which brought designers together across fashion, furniture, ceramics and architecture.
Amid the pace of New Zealand Fashion Week, Objects by Women held its ground for a single day, a reminder that ideas, materials and methods travel freely between creative practices, and that New Zealand’s design future is being shaped in no small part by its women.
